Why I Oughta...

You can even use them on sneakers ! I saw....rather HEARD this tv spot a few days ago.  I was minding my own business with my nose in my computer when I heard his voice.  I had to look up!  Too funny not to share. (for those of you reading this via email, you should click through to watch the video below) Anything Gilbert Gottfried is selling gets my attention!  In all seriousness, I think the Shoedini has now been added to my Christmas list.  Kind of an awesome product.

We have a big chalkboard up in our kitchen that we post various things on.  From invitations to coupons - it seems to be the hub of our offline activities.  There's a bunch of magnets that hold the various items up.  We have had a few get-togethers at our house over the past few weeks and the 'board' was purged.  Just about everything that wasn't baby-related was removed. For the past few months, I have had this comic from the Duplex strip up.  Apparently the humor (after 6 months) was lost on her because I found it on my desk.  (at least she didn't toss it!) Every time I read it, I get a bit of a giggle.  For me, it is too good not to share.  (if it is too small to read, click the comic for a bigger version!) It won't need to go back up on the board - as it will live on here forever!

We've been trying to document the babe's (relatively new) life over on her own blog - which is a whole 'nother discussion - and as part of that documentation, Nat and I went out and bought a Flip Camera.  We had both of our mobile phone cams, but we thought this would be easier - and besides....there was a $30 off coupon in the Costco mailer. Hopefully she'll appreciate the little slices of (her) life that we're capturing.  If you know her blog address, you can head over there and see (what I think is her) first word in next few days!  (not really...but a dad can hope he has a super genius, right?)

Last Friday, I met with some DuPage County State Representatives to talk about Google tools and how they can use these free products to communication and manage their constituencies.  Our conversation naturally moved into the discussion of our tools within campaigns. I discussed with them the notion that by simply using a wide range of free widely-available consumer tools, one could pull together an advocacy site in a few hours.  From creating a site that is petition driven (this is what I could have done with DraftDitka.com today!) or using maps to "show off" actions around their Districts, Legislators today should be moving quickly and frequently (try something an if it doesn't stick, abandon it). Leaving the meeting, I figured I should put my money where mouth was:  I needed to build an example site for them using the very tools I outlined. That's what I did:  I created ElmhurstStinks.com - a site dedicated to encouraging the City of Elmhurst to d...

A more-full report on the 25th anniversary of Back to the Future in Naperville is forthcoming, but one of the things I learned after listening to the "original" Jennifer (Claudia Wells) was that in BTTF 2, they had to re-shoot the opening scene/closing scene from #1 because the actor playing Jennifer changed (Elisabeth Shue in #2). Some smart person on YouTube has put the scenes together.  Pretty incredible job in re-creating the scene.

We've decided to move on to building a garage this summer.  Yeah...our house DOES NOT HAVE ONE.  Somehow, when we bought the house, there were so many glaring issues/problems that the fact that there wasn't a garage didn't seem like that big of a deal.  When ceilings in a few rooms are falling in, I suppose the lack of a garage doesn't jump out at you as a huge issue. Now that we've remedied **most** of the issues in the house, my thoughts turn outdoors.  This was our first winter in the house and getting in cold icy cars every morning isn't fun, so a garage it shall be! Both Equation Boy/Man and I are going through the process together (they need a garage, too!), and our garages are going to be fairly similar, but with some minor modifications.  They have a driveway from the front of their house, whereas we'll use the alley.   They have a wider lot than us. They want some dormers to make it pretty, I want height to protect the yard from the sun.  ...

I wrote one post about Lou's old menu and not 2 hours later they start following me on Twitter.  Pretty nice social media move and one that I can appreciate.  We can get into the merits of what value this is bringing to their organization - and that is a healthy discussion - but I can respect the fact that Lou's has someone monitoring what is being said about their brand online.

One of Nat's besties had a baby recently (a boy!) and Nat - being a busybee - wanted to lend a hand. Unfortunately, the friend lives out of state, so the best we could do was to prepare some meals, freeze 'em, and ship them off with her friend's mom when she went to see her daughter. (If you gave us a nice gift for the birth/baptism/pregnancy - thanks.   I loved it soooooo much!)  However, one of the best gifts anyone gave us during the pregnancy/baby was frozen meals.  We still have some of them in the freezer - they're the gift that keeps on giving!  When Nat is dog tired from battling the babe all day and I have class, so I don't get home until 10 pm, these are saviors.  We had tacos, enchiladas, chicken and salads and even chicken tetrazzini (although it wasn't frozen!).  While I'm certain Nat enjoyed all the "onesies" and such that our friends and family showered on us, I really appreciate the care that goes into the fro...

25 years?!?  Back to the Future came out 25 years ago?  Apparently so. To celebrate, some high school friends and I are getting together at the  Hollywood Palms Theatre in Naperville  this Saturday to sit down with the original Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells), Lorraine McFly (Lea Thompson), Dr. Emmit Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and Principal Strickland (James Tolkan). As my friends Matt and Steve pointed out:  There's nothing like a bunch of 30 year old dudes getting geeked up for the original Jennifer - not  Elisabeth Shue from #2 and #2 . Nat is, embarrassingly, a BIGGER BTTF fan than I am, so she's tagging along.  We've bought tickets to the 6 pm show and we'll probably get there early.  Join us, please.  We'll be able to "Save the Clocktower" on the the big screen!  The event's proceeds go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

UPDATE:  If you are looking for the recipe I talked about in this post, you can find it here:   Lou Malnati's Salad Dressing Recipe . ------------------------------------------------- I was in our local Lou Malnati's picking up a pie a few nights ago waiting around - ours wasn't 'quite ready'.  I started to read the old framed news article and caught a few cute things.  First, the Chicago Tribune published their salad dressing recipe back in the late 60's.  I took a photo and I'll give it a shot at some point.  Of course, I'll share the results here on the blog. The other item of note was this menu.  How cute is this thing?  It is the original from the day they opened.  A cheese pie.  Sausage and cheese pie.  A few sang-wiches.  And some wine by from the barrel.   Just a single-sided page with 3 columns.  Very simple and straight-forward - unlike today's Lou's menu.   Like a lot of you guys, I've had a secr...